Shift and Striptease Herbert Dombrowski’s Hamburg

The black-and-white works of the Hamburg photographer Herbert Dombrowski (1917–2010) offer a subtle and captivating look at everyday life in the Hamburg districts of Altona and St Pauli in the 1950s. Shot at the “right” (for Dombrowski always unique) moment, the photographs capture life after the deprivation of the war years. During the Nazi period Dombrowski was hunted after for anti-Semitic reasons, went into hiding and was incarcerated. He lost everything in the war – except his Leica camera. After 1945 he began to work with it as a professional photographer. The exhibition unites a selection of over 50 photographs by Dombrowski. It was developed in collaboration with the Galerie Hilaneh von Kories, Berlin.